4 Easy Construction Activities for Kids

Thank you to guest blogger Kristina of Toddler Approved, for sharing these creative ways to enjoy construction play!

Kids love trucks and building things! They also love to explore new materials and be on the move! We love to pick favorite themes and books and incorporate them into our weekly playtime. This week we have been doing a variety of construction themed activities inspired by the book Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Duskey.

After reading the book we did four simple construction themed activities using a few of our favorite toys. These activities got my kids moving, building, matching, working together, and having fun!

DUMP TRUCK SHAPE PUZZLE

Materials Needed: Shape sorter dump truck, colored markers, white piece of cardstock

Kids love to push the shape sorter dump truck around our house. When they aren’t watching I like to take all of the shapes out of the truck and dump them around our playroom. When it is time to clean up, I encourage kids to push the truck around and try and pick up each shape and stick it in its proper hole.

For an extra challenge we like to create dump truck shape puzzles using a piece of white cardstock and some colorful markers.

To prepare the shape puzzle we just trace the shapes from the shape sorter onto the white cardstock and outline the shapes in the corresponding colors.

Once the kids have driven their shape sorter around the house and collected all of the shapes, then I encourage them to dump them all out and use them to complete our shape puzzle! I love watching them match the colors and notice the similarities in the shapes as they put the blocks in their proper spots on our paper puzzle.

EASY BLOCK TUNNELS

Materials Needed: pull back construction vehicles, jumbo cardboard blocks

Our cardboard blocks are one of the most popular toys at our house. We’ve had them for over seven years! My older kids love to build things that my 10-month-old daughter can knock down.

Lately the kids have also been having a lot of fun with our pull back construction vehicles. The other afternoon we took out the vehicles and the blocks and made some simple block tunnels. The kids pretended to be construction workers and built tunnels using our jumbo cardboard blocks. They had to work together to figure out what size blocks they needed in order to make sure each tunnel could stay up. My 10-month-old roamed around and knocked the tunnels down.

Once the tunnels were built, the kids tried to send the pull back construction vehicles through the tunnels without letting them hit the sides.

It was a challenge to race one, two, and even three vehicles at a time through the tunnels before baby sister arrived to knock everything down.

As the kids experimented with the pull back vehicles they learned a few things about angles and trajectory in a hands on way. They also learned to problem solve as their vehicles ran into blocks or each other or didn’t go through the tunnel.

The best part about both of these activities was that the kids were having so much fun moving and exploring that they didn’t even realize they were learning!

You can find two more of our awesome and simple Construction themed activities over on Toddler Approved today.

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